


The Horrible Hatch Histories

by half_sleeping



Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-02
Updated: 2011-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-14 08:15:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/half_sleeping/pseuds/half_sleeping
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Honestly, the only thing that you need to know is that the epilogue to all of these is, '...and then Veser's dad beat him.' Assorted drabbles and ficlets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Even through the

look

in Lee's eyes, Vesser thinks

of the song his mother sings when her husband is not in the house of

the way she used

to touch him before

he grew to look too much like her husband

half-loving

half-hating

all-regret and-

"Please tell me," he says, suddenly, daring, bold as never before- "You've figured it out."

 

.0.

  
It's one _fuck_ of beating that Vesser gets when

he gets sent home because

he flipped tables after

the teacher told them the selkie story

and she wouldn't admit there might be any more to it

after the selkie left.

Any more

to the children she had

with the husband left crying on the shore.

Vesser isn't sure if

he wants the story to end

knowing

she'll never take him with her.

 

.0.

  
Suddenly

Vesser thinks

You are my real father

when Lee is

standing there staring, his heart cracking to bites.

It's that

it must be that

when Lee leaves and Vesser

can't bear to see him go

and wants

him never to come back.

 

.0.

  
And Lee comes again

like he always does and it's

heat

curling, around the always-cool of his skin and his mother's house

serene as the sea without strangers

in the pit of Veser's belly just where

he puts his hands in his hoodie.

It must be love

thinks Vesser

because Lee is everything that is light and good and right in his life

Lee is lovestruck and kind and all that Veser needs to know he learns from watching him

and

he's right

and

he's very

very

wrong.

Because Vesser, he

learns to stand and watch

from Lee too, heart

cracking

without a sound.

 

.0.

  
For some reason, catching Lee steal out of your house with your wife's skin, your first thought is, with sadness, I would rather have had him secretly lusting over Veser.

 

.0.

 

(From thelovemafia @ lj)

  
I'm sure Veser's dad thought, _If it had been Veser I wouldn't have needed to kill him for it._

 

 _. _0.__

  
That was his second thought and

it came on the heels of

his wife

cooking quietly in the kitchen and Lee

red-faced (from racing up the stairs away from the kitchen)

shifty-eyed (from loving his best friend's wife)

and the way Veser

looked at Lee

with the same goddamn face she puts on

every time

she thinks

she isn't

letting him know

how much she hates him.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These come from a different continuity, but are roughly in the same spirit.

So far it's been touching, just touching, skin to skin and mouths tangling as limbs tangle in sheets on lazy summer days, some hours just drifting in and out of sleep with the blinds shut and the air heavy on the lungs like love.

At least until he smiles, reaches a hand into his discarded jeans, and pulls out condoms and lube.

Lee colours at once, immediately, but his best friend's smile widens and he wraps his hand around Lee so that Lee arches into that clutch, and says, deliberately, "I know you've wanted to."

"Me-" says Lee, and he leans forward and kisses him, hot, sweet, until Lee has pulled him to him again and is desperate, desolate, for wanting something _more_.

"I want you to have what you want, Lee," he says, and soon Lee is sinking into him inch by inch and achingly slow, taking in every change of expression and glorying in the fondness in his best friend's eyes, the faint endurance, and Lee kisses and kisses him again to banish that edge from his expression.

Afterwards Lee is sobbing into his shoulder and gabbling _oh love this so good oh so tight love **you**_ \- and where Lee can't see it, pleasure suffuses his best friend's face.

.0.

He coughed, delicately, and Lee started right out of his seat with nervousness and worry.

Slim shoulders were pitched forward, and Lee felt as he always did around his best friend- over-large, clumsy, too slow too stupid too _dull_.

"You worry too much," he said, and patted Lee's frozen, awkward hand.

Lee looked at how his hand wrapped around Lee's own wrist and blushed to think of it.

"Hatch," called the nurse, and he hoisted himself up as gracefully as if he was driven by something other than normal human flesh.

"We'll do something after this," he said, and sounded so apologetic that Lee immediately wilted, saying, "No, no, if you don't feel well we can just-"

"Your house," he suggests, and there's something sweet and dark and just a little too heavy in his voice, weighing down on Lee's stomach.

"I'll drive you," Lee said eagerly, "I'll wait, right, right here, I'll always be here-", and his best friend gave him that lovely beaming smile that meant, _I know_.

.0.

Lee's heart aches- softly, slowly, his shoulders tight in his rarely-worn suit and his heart tight in his chest, steps heavy even as he ascends them, because today is

today is

the happiest day of his best friend's life.

He tells him this while unbuttoning his shirt while Lee is hiding in his sheets, tense and strung-out and pathetically, desperately grateful, pretending he's not loving every inch of his best friend, _Oh, I'm getting married tomorrow. Simple ceremony, you're the best man, you don't know her._

And Lee's

just

shocked

bare.

And he smiles, with his hands on Lee's skin, pressing him into half-sticky sheets. _You're my best man, Lee. Make my bachelor party count_.

And Lee

moves into his hands

responds

re _acts_.

They're standing together near a window and he's touching her hair, softly, sweetly, with the look on his face that means _I'm the luckiest guy in the world._. When he looks up and sees Lee, it

expands

shining out on all of them like looking into the sun.

She's the most beautiful woman Lee's ever seen in his life.

He's the most beautiful man.

.0.

Dad comes in and Lee

lights

up.

Half of that is flush, half of it the way a dog lights up, in everything from his ears to his eyes to his mouth. If Lee had a tail, thinks Veser, and is immediately rather sorry for thinking it, he would be wagging.

"Out to the garage," says Dad twinklingly, with the kind of smile that Veser would _like_ to give that girl who sits in the third row in class, the one who smiled at him when she saw him fighting the fuckers who don't like his teeth. He only realises this when he sees it done horribly right on his father's face.

"Dinner will be ready soon, though," Mom coos through her hair, hanging softly over her face to hide a snarl.

"Boy time, darling," Dad laughs at her, and even his _laugh_ is bright, from where Veser is sitting in his room with the shadows of the sun setting casting long lines against the wall, and he sits there in the dark thinking of nothing in particular for a while until his mom calls him down.

"Fetch your father," she says, tonelessly, and again gave Veser that uncertain little look, measured and considering, like a cat who can't quite decide if you are prey.

Veser's feeling sleepy so he doesn't raise his voice and screech for Dad and Lee- not that Dad likes it. He trots out, and Dad has Lee pulled against a wall, shirt open and breath harsh, mouths red and wet and Lee's eyes, Lee's _eyes_ -

Mom has to go call them herself because Veser runs away, up the stairs, and throws himself on his bed.

Veser hates his dad so much right then, right there, almost understands the tone in his mother's voice when she talks of her skin.

Of her most precious thing.  
  
.0.

Veser's dad

smiles.

It's a pretty nice smile. Looks honest. Stretches across his face naturally, warmly,

sharply

insincere as the hand that claps on Veser's back.

Soft as the snarl his mother suppresses as

he kisses the back of her neck

Subtle as a knife.

Lee's smile is dull but sweet and always always strained and _real_ , settling itself on his face

like it knows it's place

when he sees his best friend.

Dad's eyes slide past Lee

casually

with a promise in them for Veser

and the grin dies off Veser's face.

It's been a long time, knows Veser, since

Lee last met his best friend's eyes.  
  
.0.

Lee

arches and

hates himself.

This is his best friend, his _best friend_ , and just today Lee was watching his wife's words wend their way around their house, their home, while his son did his homework wincing around bruises he won't admit where they came from and

Lee

 _gasps_.

Grasps

at any bit of the life he has and wants,

wants his best friend's life.

He doesn't see the sharpness of the smile his best friend presses across his skin.

.0.

Lee runs.

The whiskey smokes through his veins, draining out of his thoughts, chased by fear and desperation, weighed down with the wrapping in his arms, which is something he almost can't believe is true is real is _hope_ -

"That wasn't yours to take," he says, half in and out of shadow, and looks hurt, looks genuinely _hurt_ , his shoulders slumping, his mouth turned down, his eyes sad and disappointed and terrible.

Lee's heart swells, almost- he knows, he must know, he'd known known known _known_ that his best friend never knew how he hurt people just by being himself, because he was always so determined and strong and god-touched, he must not never have known that he was hurting that lovely lovely girl-

"Oh, Lee," he sighs. "My _best friend_."

As always, Lee knows he's perfectly right.

.0.

"You're hurting me," Lee said, at last, almost in disbelief, with the noose around his throat and his best friend running his hands over Lee's hair softly, almost sadly.

"Yes, Lee," he said, with the impatience that Lee was so familiar with, that snap of his terrible temper, which he'd had since they were boys-

"You've hurt me," Lee said, and then he did it again.

.0.

"I trusted you with _everything_. My house, my son- do you know how many times someone tried to insinuate something about you and my wife and I _knew_ they were wrong? Because I trusted you, Lee, I trusted you _so much_ -"

.0.

"Haven't you only ever had to _ask_ me for what you wanted, and I'd give it to you? Haven't we been like family all this time, Lee? And you _steal_ from me? You try to take my wife, my _family_ -"

A gasping, bubbling cough- "You could have _asked_ ," he said, and pressed down one slow line on Lee's chest, so that the cough turned into a gurgling cry- "We could have _shared_."

 _I only wanted her to be happy,_ Lee tried to tell him, but he thinks that maybe his best friend won't understand that, never will.

Never has.

  
  


  
  
  


  
I trusted you with my heart   
  
And then you broke it and tried to hide the pieces from me; did you think your excuses were enough?   


  


  
  


  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Veser's mom was less of a victim, because the Selkie myth depressed me.

  
"Mom, what are you doing?" Veser said, once Lee had been safely packed off to the garage to coo over his father's new acquisition.

She broke off mid-warbling snatch, and said, "Hmm?"

"To Uncle Lee, Mom."

"Was I doing something?"

"You were singing again."

"I sing all the time, Veser. I sang to you as a baby. Your father likes it." _Your father loves it_ -and it slices a little hole through Veser's heart, but he keeps on:

"Mom, you were _singing_. The kind of singing you don't do to me."

"Veser, darling," she said almost vaguely, and felt her son's humanity so keenly in that moment, sharper than the knife in her hands, "I don't know any other way to sing."

When he limps back up the stairs, the song starts again: siren-like, high and clear enough to cut through the crash of surf on rock shelf, and Veser wishes he had wax enough to block Lee's ears.

.0.

He was almost sweet, how he lingered at the corners of her vision as if hoping she wouldn't see him and knowing that she could, and sometimes she would change her song for him, the old sailor-song, and he would drift himself a little closer almost without knowing he did it.

Even as she busied herself, she recalled slipping through the water sweet as silk, sunning herself on the rocks, the taste of blood in the salt, the sweetness of human flesh and suffering.

Her skin, somewhere no one can reach. Well-hidden.

Well,

perhaps

(she sings)

perhaps

(he watches)

perhaps

(and one day, she _has_ him, too enraptured to know better he _comes_ -)

Not a year later, she bears him a son, and the smile she offers him digs into the dryness of her skin, the baking heat of hate.

Her skin is _very_ well-hidden, and he _has_ her.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for an April Fool's drabble request meme: makes light of child molestation.

Lee came to the house again, as he always tried not to do but somehow always ended up doing anyway; driving aimlessly with nothing to do but drop in at his best friend's house just in time for dinner, with an hour or two to spend staring at the back of the head of the woman he loved.

A usual day.

But the house was more empty than usual, and Lee panicked and ran through the house in fear before thankfully finding Veser sitting on the back step staring at a lighted candle in the grass.

"Veser?" Lee said, uncertainly, and Veser twitched all over in one long shudder, looked up, and said, "Hey," in a voice full of trembly shivery relief and sadness and anger and resignation and regret, a voice far too old to belong to a child. He scrubbed at his face, and said, "Hey!" much more normally, with the edge back in his voice. "They ditch you, too?"

"What?" said Lee. "Veser, where are your-"

"He left a note on the fridge," said Veser, and rolled his eyes. This unfortunately showcased how red they were. Lee went and plucked it off the fridge while Veser picked up a twig and set it on fire.

 _Lee, took the wife for a little 3rd/4th honeymoon, watch Veser, thanks forever buddy we love you._

 _Always_ , thought Lee, with just the slightest touch of desolation; at least this time he'd left Lee Veser to occupy his time.

He went back out and discovered to his shock that Veser had managed a tiny bonfire; he immediately rushed back in, grabbed the sink-hose, and put it out, soaking Veser and himself in the process.

"What was with the candle, anyway?" he asked Veser much, much later, after bathtime and see-what-Lee-can't-cook time and i-am-totally-old-enough-to-watch-south-p

ark-time.

"...nothing," said Veser. "I just wanted to watch something burn."

(Later, when Veser's dad came back, he took Veser aside very very seriously, and seemed disappointed when Veser insisted that Lee hadn't touched him anywhere at all.

Yet.

 _Worst birthday ever_.

There was always next time.)

 


End file.
